The present invention relates to an attachment for a hand truck and in particular to a hand truck attachment for lifting heavy and/or bulky items such as tables and/or chairs.
Hand trucks are commonly used to transport various heavy and bulky items. Most hand trucks are structured with two wheels, a base support and a vertical frame terminating in suitable handles.
In use, the items to be transported are placed on the base support. The hand truck is tilted, allowing the items to lean against the vertical frame when the base support is lifted off of the ground surface. The wheels enable the truck to be pushed or pulled to transport the items. Conventional hand trucks perform quite well for transporting symmetrically shaped articles such as boxes, packing cases and the like. However, it is often difficult to transport bulky items of non-symmetrical shape because such items do not easily fit on the hand truck structure. This problem has been addressed as shown in prior art devices used on hand trucks, such as auxiliary support arms or the like in U.S. Pat. No. 653,826 to Soule et al, U.S. Pat. No. 2,795,433 to Moriarty, U.S. Pat. No. 2,869,886 to Wardell and U.S. Pat. No. 3,690,488 to Cave, among others.
The present invention is a hand truck cart attachment which enables bulky items such as tables and chairs to be transported easily by a single person. The attachment is a plate having two pair of support prongs extending perpendicular from the plate. The plate is provided with mounting hooks to removably engage the support frame of the hand truck cart enabling the attachment to be positional at the top or bottom or midway on the cart structure. When the attachment is in place on the hand truck, the plate lies flat against the vertical frame and the prongs extend horizontally from the frame to provide additional supports on the truck.
The support prongs are capable of being adjustably positioned on the support plate enabling them to be spaced in accordance with the particular load to be carried.
The attachment prongs serve as series of extended finger-like projections and the various sized and shaped articles to be carried is placed within the projections. The hand truck cart is tilted, raising the projections upwardly to engage the load. A lifting force applied to the handle enables the load to be lifted by using the wheels as a fulcrum. The lower set of prongs engages the load to lift it, whereas the upper set of prongs maintains the load in place as it is being lifted.
Among the objects of the present invention are the provision of a hand truck cart attachment to facilitate the transporting of heavy odd-shaped items; the provision of an attachment to facilitate the transporting of tables and chairs by a single person.